Tuesday, July 3, 2012

2009 california white

i spent the weekend away with friends.
i hiked a mountain. my butt is sore. while bringing the rear of the troup up the mountain i thought a lot. i thought about how i love to write. and how i haven't done it much. if i need to make time to do something, is it actually something i should be doing? shouldn't i just want to write, and the time will come naturally? well this all got me inspired.
so when we returned back to calgary. and i came back to an empty mansion. i decided to spend my evening writing with a bottle of wine.
this is the result. enjoy.

writing turban

i am a writer.

a writer who doesn’t write.

i wonder if i should have to make the time for it. if i need to. shouldn’t it just come naturally?

it comes naturally. the writing that is. but the time, the time does not.

tonight i’ve allocated the hours of my evening for prepping the house for the family’s return tomorrow (laundry, dishes, making beds, vacuuming etc), and for drinking a bottle of white wine while writing.

and in the morning i will guzzle down an electrolyte pumped gatorade and edit.

for dinner i started with onions. i sliced them, threw them in a pan with olive oil, added grilled mushrooms, and then burnt them. i am now adding pasta and parmesan.

in the movie love actually colin firth’s character is a writer. he finds his wife cheating on him with his brother and he packs up and heads out to a cottage. you come to learn that on several other occasions he has rented this same cottage. he goes there to write. to be secluded and to write. the cottage backs on to a large pond surrounded by foliage that i can only assume is a kin to what inspired monet in paris.

i think of doing this.

making time to write. when i imagine it the locale is different. i imagine going to thailand, renting a house from my friend susanna and spending a month there. just writing. going to the market in the morning to buy my forty cent breakfast, and a large pineapple. i picture myself wearing big full butt underwear and an oversized plaid shirt sitting on the deck of her house listening to the waves crash against the sand below. and i imagine myself pausing between taking sips of warm thai beer to look down through the cracks in the wooden deck to see the water moving the garbage still left from the tsunami around to a new home, several feet away from its last.

the pasta was cold by the time i ate it. the wine in a plastic stemless wine glass, meant for camping. which is ironic because the woman of the house who it belongs to couldn’t be farther from someone who lists camping as a hobby.

this weekend i went to canmore with my friend and her boyfriend. we stayed at their married friends house. i was the fifth wheel. on the drive we listened to joel plaskett. i could feel the bass rumble through the car doors. like a baby being patted on the back it soothed me. i sat with my legs stretched out over the back seat. i was staring out the window and was watching the rocky mountains pass by. i blinked and they were gone. dum da dum dum - dum da dum dum. the music made my eyelids heavy and made the corners of my lips turn up into a secret smile. i remembered looking out at the scenery in all of the different countries i have been in so far. looking at the mountains pass me from a train in austria, watching the night fall upon open fields in turkey from a cramped bus seat, and staring out at the pacific as i rolled down the highway in a beat up land cruiser.

now i am eating the cold pasta. the sun is still out, i can see it from the kitchen windows.

i am very much a believer in the saying “it’s the journey, not the destination”. and also karma.

i just walked into the home office. i stared at the oversized mom desk. it was covered in pink and yellow post-its with piles of papers about birthday party rsvp’s, school head lice warnings, and fall activity registration sign up sheets. i saw her large monthly calendar. it was flipped to september 2012. prepping for the upcoming school year. she was already jotting down appointments. kid 1 swimming three nights a week, kid 2 dance lessons sunday mornings, kid 3 art class thursdays, kid 4 starts pre-school. i smiled. i wouldn’t be here.

i just finished the laundry and my third glass of wine. and in an unexpected turn of events a pan of brownies is in the oven.

now i’ve made a cup of coffee. instant. i mixed together my instant coffee while beside me on the counter sat a five thousand dollar cappuccino machine, that i have purposefully not been taught how to use. the sound of music is playing. the movie, not the sound track. right now baroness schraeder just walked onto the balcony to find captain von trapp looking down onto the courtyard. his eyes following maria as she paced back and forth in front of the large iron gates that topped the staircase to the lake. one of my favorite movies. now maria and the captain are sitting inside the glass gazebo. discussing why she returned from the abby. it’s awkward and playful. they start to sing.

“for here you are standing there loving me

whether or not you should

so somewhere in my youth or childhood

i must have done something good”

the sun has left the back deck now. in the sky there are dark rain spitting clouds, tip toeing in closer and closer every time i look up.

i left the writing for hours. now it is completely dark outside. my coffee is cold, the brownies are done and so is the bottle of wine.